The present invention relates, in general, to semiconductor components and, more particularly, to packages for semiconductor components.
Packages protect semiconductor components from physical and environmental stresses as well as provide a means for sending and receiving electrical signals to and from the semiconductor component. An important type of package is a Ball Grid Array (BGA) package. BGA packages are surface mount packages that don't have leads commonly found in packages such as dual in-line packages, plastic leaded chip carriers, quad flat packs, or the like. Thus, BGA packages do not present skew and lead co-planarity problems that are typical of leaded devices. In addition, BGA packages typically offer higher Input/Output (I/O) interconnect quantities per given area and thus occupy less circuit board space and offer lower lead inductance than conventional packages.
The Ball Grid Array (BGA) package is a surface mount package that is designed to accommodate single semiconductor device sizes. Additionally, a variety of different sized surface mount packages allow selection of the surface mount package based on the number of electrical connections to the semiconductor device. However, the variety of different sized surface mount packages does not always provide a cost effective solution to the need for packaging different sized semiconductor components. For instance, the large variety of different sized packages increases the semiconductor device manufacturer's inventory, as well as the costs for assembling, testing, and shipping the semiconductor devices.
Accordingly, it would be advantageous to have a BGA package that reduces the semiconductor device manufacturer's costs. It would be of further advantage to provide a common package capable of accommodating a wider range of sizes of semiconductor components than is presently available.